


Even If

by behindthec



Category: Wicked - All Media Types, Wicked - Schwartz/Holzman, Wicked RPF
Genre: Angst, F/F, chenzel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-02
Updated: 2015-09-02
Packaged: 2018-04-18 18:12:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4715720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/behindthec/pseuds/behindthec
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>The sight of her handwriting is enough to ignite the pang in Idina’s chest, the one that so effortlessly hibernates until the barest disturbance rouses it from slumber.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Even If

**Author's Note:**

> The bae and I were watching _Coming Home_ and discussing how Chenzel af [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YYNT8BTvKo) was, and I thought, well that sounds just angsty enough to write.
> 
> Dedicated to Bru, because of post-its. (I can’t fucking get away from post-its with these two, swear to god.) To Jay and Gabriela, who have been so vocally bitter about my lack of fic. And to Button, who forgave me and loves me still.
> 
> _________________

_The more I know, the less I understand  
All the things I thought I knew, I'm learning again_

-

 

It could’ve been an accident, her perfume on the envelope.

Idina knows better.

Kristin underestimates her, but that’s nothing new. The sight of her handwriting is enough to ignite the pang in Idina’s chest, the one that so effortlessly hibernates until the barest disturbance rouses it from slumber. It awakens angry and disoriented, every time, and never fully rested.

_I know you’re busy, but just in case…  
_ _K_

Idina fans the tickets out between her fingers. Two, like she’d actually bring a date. Kristin’s dedication to propriety was half their downfall and she damn well knows it, yet she couldn’t even be bothered to write a proper invitation. But that’s nothing new, either.

Her hand brings the note to her lips, skin brushing faintly over the paper. She inhales once, eyes shut, and there are slender fingers clutching at her back in the silent dark. One hand brushes damp blonde strands away from flushed cheeks; the other immersed in tight, wet heat, with the heady scent of sweat-drenched perfume and something stronger, better, filling the air. She feels nails digging into her skin, dragging gorgeous red marks across pale, slick shoulderblades, sea green eyes catching hers in the moonlight, and the gasp as Kristin arches up and pulls her down, their tongues meeting wildly.

The note and envelope shoot into the trash, crumpled and clammy from the vice of her trembling fist. She tucks the tickets into the top drawer of her nightstand beneath a pale pink, 10-year-old post-it with a flowered border. All the sticky has worn off, so now it just slides around the drawer, always in the way, ink faded and edges worn. There were more; there were hundreds. She’d thrown some away every few months, whenever she was feeling strong, until just the one survived.

“Do you love me?” Idina had asked, ten seconds to places at Kristin’s last show.

Kristin hadn’t answered, only stared. Idina found the note tucked into a pocket of her purse, hours later.

_Always, always, and always._

 

-

 

“Take me home with you,” Idina would tell her, head pillowed on Kristin’s soft, bare stomach while she stared at the Oklahoma-bound valise on Kristin’s cluttered bedroom floor. Off-white carpet peeked out in patches from beneath the piles of bras, sweatpants, fanmail, DVDs, and a few of Idina’s own shirts.

A smirk would follow a raised eyebrow as delicate golden fingers carded through Idina’s hair. “You sure about that, sugar?”

Idina was. She never said so.

 

-

 

There is an intersection in Broken Arrow that she and Mark would cross on their bikes to get ice cream, until the day she swerved to miss a car. She went down hard and earned six stitches, but Mark felt so bad for her that he brought her ice cream every day until she could walk again.

Idina had pressed a series of soft kisses to the scar on the outside of her right knee, and Kristin sighed.

“Totally worth it.”

“‘Cause I’m giving you attention or ‘cause you got a year’s worth of butternut pecan in a week?”

Kristin winked. “Both.”

 

-

 

The ice cream shop is gone now. In its place stands the performing arts center with the theatre bearing Kristin’s name, and Idina can’t breathe.

It was a mistake. Every corner of her life that Kristin has touched has been a mistake. It’s easier to walk away, telling herself that. It’s easier to forget Kristin’s head tossed back in giggles or the tickle of fingers ghosting over her skin in the dark, in the light, in their dressing room, in the wings of the stage, on the side streets of Manhattan. There was a time Kristin couldn’t keep her hands off her, and Idina couldn’t breathe then, either.

She doesn’t go far, just shoves the tickets back into her purse, tells the driver to stop, and nestles herself into a chair on the back patio of a cafe. Close, but not theatre crowd close. Close enough to walk, if she gets the nerve. Far enough to request the wine menu, if she doesn’t.

An hour later, she does.

 

-

 

She doesn’t risk the main entrance. She has enough confidence to try the stage door, and the first person who opens it lets her in without a word after a quick once-over.

“Third door on the right,” he tells her with an uncomfortable smile, but Idina’s not looking for her dressing room. She came to see Kristin perform. That’s all Kristin had asked for, and just barely.

She tucks herself into a spot offstage that hides her from view, where Kristin’s visible from behind at an angle. She’s changed out of what Idina knows must’ve been a spectacular evening gown or two or ten, into skintight jeans and a pink, too-big button-down that Idina recognizes at once from her own closet.

Her heart leaps, plummets, then begins to bubble and fill with something she’ll call anger. She’s been looking for that fucking shirt for ten goddamn years.

She doesn’t hear the music until it’s too late.

She can’t see Kristin’s face, but she doesn’t need to. She imagines it looks much the same as it did the last time they’d heard it.

 

-

 

In July of 2004, Kristin lit up the Gershwin for the last time. It went smoothly with few hiccups, and no one noticed her bloodshot eyes or the puffy red pockets beneath. Stage makeup is made for more than just lighting.

When Idina had ventured into the pale pink fantasy thirty minutes to curtain, Kristin wasn’t sparkling at the mirror in baby blue and rhinestones, poised and proud. She was huddled on the floor against the front of her sofa in a tank top and boyshorts, knees pulled up to her chest and tears streaming down her face, with an old Don Henley song pouring from her stereo.

Idina stood in the doorway, waiting for an invitation, but Kristin seemed to be using all her energy to keep Idina’s eyes locked on hers.

Idina broke away and stared down at her hands, the green smearing slightly as she fidgeted.

Kristin opened her mouth, but only a squeak emerged. Idina stepped backwards, closing the door behind her.

She’d heard enough.

 

-

 

Stagehands know best because they know most. Without the spotlight for distraction, they get to know you inside and out until they can read between lines you didn’t even know existed.

The same one is waiting at Kristin’s dressing room when Idina returns. He offers another, slightly less uncomfortable smile, and pushes the door open.

Idina says “Thank you,” and slips inside just in time to drown out Kristin’s last note.

She doesn’t look around. She doesn’t take anything in. Already it’s too much. She crosses the room for distance and stares at the closed door until the final applause dies down and the backstage bustle begins to thicken outside.

She hears Kristin’s laughter first, then a few excited, high-pitched words too muffled to translate, before the door swings open.

Kristin is surprised, which is a surprise. Idina assumed he would’ve told her -- warned her -- but not even Kristin’s practiced, steeled apathy hides the shock.

It takes Idina a full, agonizing minute to realize she has nothing to say that can be said.

“I do,” she says anyway.

There’s a bewildering defiance to the words. Kristin’s brow furrows in confusion, her eyes guarded beneath the sparkle of makeup and something realer, something wild and wet. Idina feels two large tears drop over her own cheeks and decides she has nothing left to lose.

“I do still love you.”

 

-

 

In the hotel room hours later, there isn’t the laughter she remembers, the giggling teases or affectionate murmurs or carefree abandon, but there are things that remain -- some a roaring bonfire and others a mere flicker, but the trust in Kristin’s eyes is much the same as Idina remembers: strong, complete, and utterly private.

“I’ve never trusted anyone like this,” Kristin had told her, drunkenly but honestly, blushing and sweaty, in the locked-down memory Idina had labeled San Francisco and struggled every day to forget.

They don’t talk much, but their bodies say enough. It might as well have been yesterday, and a thousand years all at once. Everything Idina had forgotten comes rushing back, but to be fair, she’d never quite forgotten at all.

“Stay,” she whispers into Kristin’s bare shoulder, spooning her tightly, their arms crossed and entwined tight over Kristin’s bare chest.

Kristin tenses, as expected. Idina’s being manipulative, plunging them deliberately back into their worst memory to shake off her sense of reason. The wretchedly hot night in July after hours, days, millennia of fighting, when Kristin had stood at the window naked, stoically fighting whatever emotion had survived. Idina had come up behind her, wrapped strong, trembling arms around the tiny frame, and begged, “Stay.”

She didn’t. And she won’t.

 

-

 

Idina wakes early, but alone. The pink shirt is folded carefully on a chair.

She rifles through the folds of fabric for a note, searches and re-searches until the shirt is a crumpled mess in her hands.

  
  


 

_**fin.** _


End file.
